Mulhaupt is regarded
as one of the finest artists to work on Cape Ann, a member of the "imported"
group who were not indigenous to Massachusetts nor the greater New England
area. Despite Mulhaupt's distant origins in the Midwest where he spent many
years before traveling, he is regarded as "the Dean of the Cape Ann
School."

Born in Rock Port, Missouri, Mulhaupt's early years were
spent around the Kansas-Missouri border region, sometimes in areas still
viewed as "Indian country." His first career-oriented job was
with a magazine in the now legendary Dodge City. But a change in aspirations
eventually found him taking courses at the Kansas City School of Design.
By the early 1890's Mulhaupt had made his way to Chicago, at the time the
only place of opportunity for aspiring artists in the Midwest, studying
at the Art Institute. Mulhaupt spent many years in Chicago, helping to found
the Chisel and Palette Club and eventually becoming a teacher at the Art
Institute. By 1904 he had made the leap and settled in New York, joining
the Salmagundi Club.

However, like many budding young American painters, Mulhaupt's
most important decision was to study in France. Little is known of his stay
or the exact itinerary of his travels, but surviving pictures from France
and England, especially St. Ives, mark a new era for the painter. These
were the first hints of his remarkable aptitude for coastal and harbor images,
laying the foundation for his years in Cape Ann.

Upon returning to the United States, Mulhaupt took his
first trip to Gloucester in 1907. His technique had matured considerably
in the previous years, and in the harbors of Cape Ann he found a visual
tableau of light, color and texture that he had been waiting for all of
his life, as he had once described that Gloucester "duplicates any
views I care to paint."[18]
From then on, Mulhaupt spent most of his summers in the region, exhibiting
at the Gallery-on-the-Moors in five of the first seven exhibitions. He was
also a founding member of the North Shore Arts Association. By 1923, no
other areas could lure Mulhaupt away, and he settled in Gloucester, eventually
buying a former blacksmith's shop on Rocky Neck where he painted year round,
despite the lack of running water in the winter.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Mulhaupt was not a plein
air painter, despite the spontaneous, on location style of many of his larger
pictures. He was a very careful, methodical artist who did highly detailed
sketches outdoors, returning to his studio where a majority of his larger
pictures were produced. Few of his contemporaries were as skilled in complex
compositions and subtleties of color, especially in capturing the myriad
of whites and greys characteristic of his winter harbor scenes.

Although he had the deepest respect of his students who
recall his encouraging style of instruction, always critiquing but never
altering their canvases, they also remember him as being a very quiet, perhaps
introverted man who preferred painting alone to socializing in artists'
circles. He was from a more traditional, conservative era of American painters
who preferred hard work rather than its symbols. Often business dealings.
and the sale of his pictures were left to his wife; he was too consumed
by the thought of his next creation. As Charles Movalli describes Mulhaupt:

"He's like a host of other fine American painters who painted
and moved on, leaving a newspaper obituary behind them. They were independent
entrepreneurs, men and women who wanted to paint and who cultivated nature
rather than dealers and public relations men."[19]